


Looming

by Flakeblood



Series: October Prompts 2020 [7]
Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Aftercare, BDSM, Blood, Flogging, Gothic, Impact Play, Last two are all Isaac, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Necromancy, Non-Explicit Sex, Non-Sexual Bondage, October challenge, Self-Flagellation, Spanking with a whip, Strangers to Lovers, Trust, Whipping, but only out of the corner of your eye, enjoy these goth bfs, forgemasters, shadows move in the dark, the castle is a strange and non-comprehensible structure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:02:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26887813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flakeblood/pseuds/Flakeblood
Summary: Hector takes some time to settle in to the castle, its ways and the creatures within mysterious and often chilling. But it's that which makes Isaac stand out, a candle in the night.
Relationships: Hector/Isaac Laforeze
Series: October Prompts 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950874
Comments: 12
Kudos: 35





	Looming

**Author's Note:**

> Day 7: Enemies to lovers with characters who work together  
> Additional prompt: Goths
> 
> UPDATE: Huge thank you to [ecastle_vania](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecastle_vania/pseuds/ecastle_vania) for the title art! ♡
> 
> BDSM scene starts with "Soft leather bound his wrists up" and aftercare starts with “Very good Hector.” Just in case anyone needs to skip around.

  


Hector had never been inside a building that loomed the way Dracula’s castle did. From the moment he stepped through the doors, it was as though the shadows had swallowed him up, the only light from far away, unnatural bulbs which never flickered, much like eyes staring down from their perch. Every wall was constructed solid, yet the further up one looked, the more twisted and alive the architecture seemed. Hector did not look up often.

But not looking at something does not stop things from being there.

“Hector.” He tried his very best not to startle at the voice, though his heart beat hard enough that he might as well have screamed. It would have made little difference to Dracula, but Hector hoped that at least his heartbeat was muffled for anything further than his workroom.

“Master Dracula.” His shoulders were slumped more than before, weighted down with the same quiet mourning on his face, but even that illusion could not hide how big the vampire was. “What can I help you with?”

For some time, Dracula said nothing, merely moved around the perimeter of the room. Even standing before him, Hector heard nothing; His steps were as quiet as the shadows.

“Is your room satisfactory?” he said, quiet, drawn out, as though thinking through his words even as he spoke them.

“Yes, of course. Thank you, Master Dracula.”

“And how is your work?”

“It’s going well,” Hector said. “I am getting used to it, and the work is coming faster.”

Dracula paused by a window, his face silhouetted in the scant rays of moonlight. “And do you enjoy it? Your work?”

“Yes,” Hector answered immediately.

Dracula closed his eyes. “Good.”

0-o-0

Daylight was a scarce resource, one which Hector hoarded jealously. Most of his work needed to be done at night, and so when he was awake long enough, he would stand outside to catch the sunrise, the hints of night falling away with the heavy mists, but the rays still new as they curved over the mountains, not quite warm enough to chase away the chill.

Sometimes, as he shivered, he could turn from the sun. The gargoyles and impossible angles of the castle looked different in the night. Sometimes Hector would try to puzzle it out, how they had changed while he wasn’t looking. But sometimes, Hector would catch a glimpse of a person.

Isaac, another working at the castle, and in the same way as Hector, appeared sporadically, or so it seemed to Hector. Not every day, or at the same time, but when the man did appear, it was always before Hector, and always on the same piece of stone jutting out over an open abyss. He would sit there, legs crossed over each other, and do nothing else. After a time, he would stand up, turn around, and go back inside. It was peculiar, Hector thought, but perhaps Isaac simply enjoyed watching nature. Hector could not tell what he looked at from his position, or if his eyes were even open, but he could be watching the sun rise, just as Hector did. Thinking of what they shared in common made Hector feel warmer, even in the cold air.

At least, until one day, when Isaac looked up. He looked up and up, unafraid of the heights of the castle, and right at Hector. They stayed that way for several moments of time, perhaps a year’s worth of sunrises.

Hector felt his eyes water from the breeze, and wiped them for just a moment--when he looked back, Isaac was gone.

A shiver ran down Hector’s spine, the hair on the back of his neck sticking up the way it did when vampires slid through the shadows. But the sun was out; No one could be behind him.

Hector went inside.

0-o-0

Vampires, ironically enough, were incredibly loud and verbose when arguing. Snatches of their arguments echoed off the stone, filling the air with a steady vibration which came and went, like the waves on a rocky cliff. Wallachia did not have those; Wallachia had miles and miles of forests, dense, rolling, and muffled. The forests absorbed sound, but the castle did not.

Hector wondered why he ever thought the castle quiet, or why he had hated it so much. But he had his work to drown it out before.

Isaac stood off to one side, stoic in the face of a vampire general who was presenting a case. They were too close, too loud, like they were trying to make up Isaac’s side of the argument as well.

Isaac cut down the general’s words with a few choice ones of his own, eyes flashing dangerously.

It was the beastial side of Isaac he never let loose, the emotion which boiled beneath the surface, a riptide under the placid face.

A different general demanded Hector’s attention, asking the same questions about his intentions as yesterday, and igniting the same fury. Even so, the look in Isaac’s eyes did not leave Hector’s mind. They followed--quietly judgemental--to his room that night, and watched him in his dreams.

0-o-0

_Clang! Clang!_

Metal struck the stone table, the ringing sound accompanied by flashes of bright blue light. On the third _clang_ , flames erupted from the head of the steel hammer, spreading out over the table, lighting the blood staining the surface a sickly purple. The flames consumed the corpse on top the table, but they did not burn.

The body stretched, reached, and screamed. Three strikes of the hammer life filled the sightless eyes once again.

One, two, three, and blue flared to life, set in a twisted, vicious face.

Hector reached out a hand to caress it.

He loved these faces. After many more years, after many more blows of his hammer, they would be the only companions left for him.

0-o-0

Isaac never went anywhere without purpose--that was the conclusion Hector had come to. When Hector found Isaac behind him, in his workroom, Hector knew there was a reason. He couldn’t, for the life of him, think of what it might be. He did not ask.

More work brought more creatures to life, thrashing and screaming. Hector wiped sweat from his brow and smiled.

“Do you enjoy your work?”

Hecto hesitated only a fraction of a second. “Yes.”

Isaac said nothing. His silence said everything.

“I enjoy forging,” Hector clarified. He squeezed the handle to his hammer tightly. “Creating life.”

“I see.” And maybe Isaac did. His eyes watched everything in the room; Hector could not escape them.

0-o-0

Hector visited Isaac’s workroom next, his forge, deeper in the castle. It was warm under the grates, nothing like the cold air Isaac sat in during the mornings. Yet Isaac sat here too; Not still, but lashing across his back.

His face was just as serene, even as red blood droplets fell from the spiked whip, tiny _plops_ a counterpoint to the _smack_ of each hit on his back.

Hector did say anything. He walked closer, to the forging table, and leaned against it.

From there, he could see part of Isaac’s back. Under the red of the open wounds lay many other scars, crisscrossing his back like fallen pine needles. Some looked deeper, where the open wounds wept into the crevasses, pooling, before dripping over and continuing down. Isaac made no sound, and did not flinch. Rhythmically, he continued--each stroke seemed like the ringing of a bell, another step in a ceremony with no name.

Later, when Hector’s mind had settled into the constant beat of the room, heart following suit, Isaac spoke.

“Why are you here, Hector?”

Blinking, something uncomfortable squirming in his chest, Hector said, “I haven’t seen you forge.”

“No. You have not.” Isaac stood to hang his whip.

Hector felt horribly warm, the squirming growing into a pile of worms, writhing in the dirt of his insides. 

Isaac grabbed a cloth and a bucket full of water which sat to the side. When he had wetted it and began squeezing water over his back with practiced motions, he spoke again. “Are you going to wait all day?”

All night was more appropriate, but Hector didn’t say so. Despite the lack of light from the outside, there, in the lower part of the castle, it was still. The shadows stayed at the edges of the room, away from the light of the ceiling and floor, and the vampires stayed on the other side. Hector did not wish to walk into the halls. He might have to.

“If you wish me to leave…”

Isaac looked up, meeting eyes for the first time since Hector entered.

Hector saw many things in them: the fire of the lights and his convictions, the consideration, the color of the blood drying slowly on his back. Isaac must have seen something in his, too.

“Wait until I am finished here. Then I will do more forging.”

Hector nodded. “That’s fine. I don’t mean to impose.”

“You are not,” Isaac said. He sounded sincere.

0-o-0

Isaac did not touch people. The way he handled the night creatures was swift and efficient, and the way he handled the generals even more so, since he appeared to not wish to come into contact with them at all. Hector had not seen him around Dracula, unless they were reporting together, standing side-by-side behind the high-backed chair of their master, only the fireplace illuminating the difference between the ailing lord and the place he sank into to mourn. Hector assumed Dracula was like the moon to Isaac: Just within sight, but ever elusive to reach.

So when Isaac touched him, Hector expected the roughness of it, the precise movements, and the way he was pinned beneath Isaac’s hands and his gaze. Only the wall behind Hector was more unyielding. Yet what he had not expected was the soft brush of lips, waiting, asking in the quiet way a shy animal did, waiting.

Hector opened for him.

Open and willing and wanting, he took Isaac’s self into him, his passion, and his hunger, and his stubborn devotion. It was hot, and fast, and left Hector burning in his own body, gasping for breaths even as each bit of air he secured went to crying out Isaac’s name.

Hector had never felt so overwhelmed. His whole body turned to merely a series of reactions, his mind only thinking in terms of push and pull, give and give and more _more more_.

And even after Hector felt as if he had been swept out to sea, the relentless tug of the ocean did not let go. Held in a tight embrace, Hector sighed at the gentle tickle of skin against his face. Isaac asked if he would like more.

Hector could not think of anyone else he would rather drown in.

0-o-0

Soft leather bound his wrists up, to keep him from moving and hurting himself. Isaac had offered one for his mouth, but only if he thought he would need it. Hector declined.

He lay on the oddly warm stone of Isaac’s forging table, the surface spotless. Isaac knew how to deal with blood.

“Are you ready?” Isaac asked from behind him.

Hector nodded, a faint sweat already beading along his back. “I am.”

“Very well. Remember that you may ask me to stop.”

“I do.” Hector shifted as Isaac brushed one hand along his naked thigh, up the back to the curve of his ass.

“Then let us begin.”

Isaac brought the whip down. Hector yelped. It was a simpler thing than what Isaac used, supple, flat, and unembellished. It worked just fine for their purposes. Despite what Hector had initially thought when they met, Isaac cared a great deal more than he let on--he cared so much he wanted to change the world itself. And Isaac would do more to Hector than Hector could handle.

Hector’s cheeks and thighs stung from each lash, the soft crack as it slapped his bottom becoming almost more terrifying than the blooming pain which would follow.

Isaac kept up a steady litany of praises and encouragements, urging Hector to breathe and giving him placid images of nature to consider. Hector thought of a still pond in a dense forest, a settling fog over a grey shore, the bright starts over the craggy peaks of the mountains, and occasionally--though unprompted--Isaac’s eyes, stern, fierce, and steadfast amidst even a whirling storm of aggressors.

Hector cried, loud and unashamedly. Isaac slowed down.

“Please,” Hector begged him.

It wasn’t like pleasure, like the highs of magic flowing through him or the spark of creation. The pain and praises together were like leaning far over a railing and staring at the ground, far above the trees. It felt as if he was diving deep under violent waters, the pressure pounding at his ears. Hector needed to know what lay at the end.

Isaac ran a fingertip along Hector’s sore skin, eliciting a moan. “Three more,” he said, firm. “Count them for me. Count them out loud, and repeat what I say.”

Hector nodded, but Isaac only prodded him with the handle of the whip. “Hector, you must speak.”

“Y-yes!” Hector said, trying to sniff. “Yes, please, I’ll do it.”

“Every word,” Isaac warned.

“Every w-word.”

“Start with three and count down,” Isaac said. Then he brought the whip down hard across both his cheeks. “Three.”

“Ah! Three!”

“I am calm within my mind.”

Hot tears flowed down Hector's cheeks, dripping from his chin. “I am calm, within my mind.” He took deep breaths, thinking only of Isaac.

“Two.” The whip hit his upper thighs.

“Augh, t-two!”

“I am at peace with my place in the world.”

Hector’s wrists sagged, hands relaxing against the warm stone. “I am at peace with my place in the world.” He felt a calm flow into him, muffling his surroundings until it was just the beat of his heart and the pulsing soreness of his bottom.

“One.” The whip came down a final time.

“One,” Hector said, voice distant and breathy.

“I am cherished and loved.”

Hector felt his throat close up, more tears threatening to spill as he closed his eyes. “I- ...I am cherished and loved,” he whispered.

“Very good Hector.”

Hector sniffled.

Isaac spent time releasing his wrists, then helping him further onto the table so he could lay his legs flat. After receiving a soft, warm blanket over his top half, Hector floated in and out of consciousness while Isaac rubbed a soothing cream on the punished areas.

“Hector, roll onto your side.”

Hector grumbled, but did as asked. Isaac helped him lean up just enough to drink some water and eat a few dried dates. Isaac laid another blanket on top of him.

“I will help you to a bed in a few minutes. Try to stay awake.”

Hector mumbled assent.

When fingers brushed through his hair, he cracked open his eyes. Isaac watched him, reserved care in his eyes. “How do you feel?”

“Fine.”

“Any more than that?”

“Sore.”

A small smile pulled at Isaac’s mouth. “I see.” And maybe he did. He ran his thumb over one of the dried tear tracks, the crusty feeling unpleasant.

“I think… I’ll leave the bloody stuff to you. But it was...” Hector flushed, the heat in his face comparable to that of a burning building. He thought of the way his mind stopped worrying, the way Isaac took care of him, and how entrusting himself had been so- “It was freeing.”

Isaac bent down and planted a kiss on his forehead. “Good. We shall discuss more later, if you wanted to try it again sometime.”

“I’d like that,” he whispered. He reached a hand out to grab Isaac’s.

Looking up at his lover, he found he didn’t mind the looming so much.

**Author's Note:**

> Ended up more like distant-coworkers-to-lovers but whatever. I had fun with this! Finally got some of our lovely forgemasters in my prompts. ╭( ･ㅂ･)و ̑̑
> 
> I hope this came out well! I haven't written a lot of scenes like the last one, so please let me know if something sounds off.  
> They do talk more about their scene once Hector gets into a soft bed.  
> And tbh, I haven't read gothic literature in a long time. Like, I kinda remember Frankenstein, The Yellow Wallpaper, The Black Cat... but I guess if you have any thought on how this turned out I'd love to hear them!
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading! I've been loving the comments and reactions. ˚✧₊⁎˓˓⁽̨̡ ˚͈́꒳˚͈̀*⁾̧̢˒˒⁎⁺˳✧༚  
> See y'all tomorrow!
> 
> UPDATE: I wrote a fic that can technically be a follow-up for this one, [Temptation is Like a Knife](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27038752), if y'all are interested.


End file.
